GEOdiffusion_MapInfo_reviewMapInfo and one of its Canadian
partners, Korem, hosted the GEOdiffusion conference last
week in Quebec City.Mike Hickey, COO of MapInfo provided this
perspective on location intelligence in his opening comments: "Location
Intelligence is disruptive because it is no longer a separate IT
function," he said.Hickey succinctly stated a market trend that many
geospatial companies are noticing.MapInfo has been in a
transitional state for several years moving toward industry specific
market solutions.As a company, it has tried to move product
development, such as with MapInfo Professional, in parallel with
solutions for enterprise computing by leveraging domain expertise in
the retailing, banking and insurance industries.It is precisely this
kind of transition that will allow the company to hold a more
competitive posture as specific industries look to incorporate location
technology with other business processes.Hickey noted that MapInfo's
4.3 million share offering last April raised $44.2 million with the
expressed purpose of growing the business through acquisition.

The GEOdiffusion Conference is a small gathering of approximately 125
people, mainly customers of Korem from the Quebec region.It provides
an opportunity to both understand what customers are doing and to get a
mid-year update on MapInfo's product direction.Korem's Push n' See
software is a rapid prototyping solution for delivering MapInfo project
data to the Web.It is Java-based and can quickly offer someone who is
not familiar with programming Web mapping software an opportunity to
push map data to the web.Push n' See should not be confused with
MapInfo's Exponare, also a rapid development platform based on .NET.

MapInfo Positioning

The following diagram offers a high level view of MapInfo product
positioning:

MapInfo Professional v.8 (MiPro) was released last June and still
serves as the company's flagship desktop mapping product.Directions Magazine did a
comprehensive review
of the product at the time.MiPro v.8.5 will be released in June 2006
and MapInfo will continue to support its current technology (read
support/enhance MiPro and MapBasic) meaning that the company will
follow a dual product strategy.See below for more of an explanation.

"Project Grande"
Project Grande is MapInfo's next generation technology.The first
release is targeted to beginners and intermediate skill users and will
have a redesigned graphic user interface.The company is not "chasing"
any specific date for release but has begun to provide a select user
group with software for testing.The new product will have
customization and extensibility options that will be programmable with
a .NET environment.Essentially, the new product will be a "MiPro lite"
version with not all of the functionality of the current MiPro product.
The company will develop this new technology while maintaining its
current platform for MiPro.

Development Platforms
MapInfo positions its development platforms to conform to skill sets of
its customers who want to deploy certain location-based information to
a broader audience.MapXtreme 2004 is a development platform that can
be customized with VB.NET for internet mapping.MapXtreme Java is the
Java version that supports J2EE tools; and Envinsa is an application
programming interface that is appropriate for delivering Web services
and supports XML, .NET or Java.

Link to Google Earth
MapInfo now offers a link to Google Earth for MiPro v.8.The Google
Earth
Link utility (documentation)
allows a MapInfo Professional user to export the current map window as
an object (See graphic below; Directions
Magazine will publish a more in depth article on this soon).
When the user clicks on the object it will open Google Earth
and drape the map window results onto the base map layer of Google
Earth.The user can export thematic maps or three dimensional prism
maps and have them displayed on Google Earth along with the map legend.
The Google Earth Link implementation uses KML to export the object.The
plugin is only available if you have MiPro v.8 installed.The user
would need to go the HELP menu and "check for updates" in order to
download it.

One customer from the Banque National du Canada mentioned that Google
presents a challenge to software providers and she considered Google
the new standard as a user interface.

Summary
The conference provided an opportunity to better understand MapInfo's
current product development approach."Project Grande" has been
anticipated for at least two years and looks to be finally coming to
fruition, even in a beta mode.In addition, MapInfo continues to push
its domain expertise in niche solutions (retail, insurance, and
banking) and to work with its partners to offer software solutions that
leverage either or both .NET and Java platforms.